During lunch at Oak Hill school, students lined up to get their meals from the cafeteria. The staff that day offered pizza and salads for entrees, milk, carrots, oranges, kiwi, smiley-faced potato wedges and breadsticks. After a cashier checked them out, students crowded into booths and long tables to chat and dine.

At one table, student Beverly Shoemake munched on her pizza and carrots, sipped her milk and ate her oranges.

"Fruits and vegetables actually taste good," she said. "They make the best food here."

Sixth grader Joshua Gallagher, however, criticized his cheese pizza.

"I would (like to have) more healthy stuff instead of greasy food," he said.

Fellow sixth grader Tyler Shelton hungered for more chicken nuggets than the five he usually got. However, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) restricts how many calories students can receive from meats. Sometimes, parents call the schools with concerns about the food. These factors make Linda Eidson, director of Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp. Food and Services, walk a tightrope.

She must straddle students' varying tastes as well as changing national guidelines for meals.

"Everybody has an opinion," said Eidson. "We can't please everybody."

Eidson decides what EVSC schools will offer for breakfast and lunch every day. She picks the foods EVSC purchases from brokers representing food corporations, basing her purchases on nutritional value and USDA guidelines. In order to offer the USDA-funded free and reduced lunches for students, schools must meet the guidelines.

For elementary school meals, between one and two servings of fruit and one of vegetable must be offered, 50 percent of grains must be whole-grain rich and meals must limit calories, fat and saturated fat. There are additional rules, which vary, but don't ease up for middle and high school meals.

The USDA is phasing in changes to battle the obesity epidemic plaguing the United States.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than a third of Americans were obese in 2009 and '10. Evansville itself earned notoriety in 2010 when a Gallup poll dubbed the city America's fattest.

"I think in the American diet, sodium in fast food is such a staple," she said.

Yet Linda Lutz, assistant director of Health Services/Coordinated School Health, said national figures are trying to change the message. First lady Michelle Obama started the "Let's Move" campaign

to encourage more nutritional eating and physical exercise for students. Lutz recommended schools check out the "Let's Move" website for ideas on how to educate students about food.

But the directors must also choose foods easy to serve to hundreds of kids in a short time frame.

"Time figures into lots of our choices," said Judy Beavin, a cook and server at Oak Hills Elementary. "We're serving 550 kids in less than three hours."

All those factors leave little room for maneuvers.

Despite that, the staff is working hard to make sure Evansville's youth grow up healthy. Eidson and Lutz believe diversifying food options for students will help achieve that goal. To do that, they started programs such as Try-it Tuesdays, where on the third Tuesday of every month volunteers encourage students to sample new, unique foods.

"The more students try new food, the more they'll be used to it," said Eidson.

"‘Ms. Lady, are you the creator of blueberries?'" Lutz laughed as she quoted a student's response she heard while volunteering at one Try-it Tuesday.

Eidson said slowly introducing new foods to students over time, rather than abruptly changing what they eat, works best.

"You don't want to see kids take it and throw it in the trash," she said. "If you try to phase things more gradually, the kids will like it more."

Beavin noticed that some students take to new foods better than others, based on what they've eaten at home.

"You can tell who's been exposed to what foods," Beavin said.

The directors emphasized that what students eat outside of school heavily influences how they'll react to foods overall. Eidson and Lutz try to educate parents about their programs and recruit more volunteers from the community to assist with their programs, all so that healthy, diverse food is reinforced for students.

"If they see adults making healthy choices, it helps them make healthy choices," Lutz said.

Ultimately, though, the directors believe students make the final call.

"They have habits. Some kids are funny about textures and trying new foods," Lutz said. "They have to have the skills and the willingness to make the healthy choices."

"You don't want to force them to eat it, but having it on hand, and doing by example, is the best way to get them to eat," Eidson said. "We really want to offer choices whenever possible."